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Disrupting the international student sausage factory
Australians love sausages but we prefer not to know what goes into them. Australians love the jobs and revenue generated by international students but most have no idea about the process of having them enter the country, and what happens when they are here. The deals we do with agents on and offshore, the deals prospective students and their parents make with agents, the property deals, the palming off of responsibility from the Department of Home Affairs to tertiary institutions and then onto agents – it’s not a pleasant business - but the end product is still consumed.
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One of the things that constantly amazes me is the amount of time and (silent) dollars spent on managing applications from international students who, in all probability, will never convert from application to enrolment. The time is perfect (in so far as real world time is ever perfect) for technologies that optimise the conversion of international applications based not on a ‘first into the queue is first to be dealt with’ model but on a ‘damn when it arrived, how likely is it to convert’ model. Institutions have the data that can inform this but not the prioritisation tools to turn that into higher conversion for lower investment; time to blend intelligent data and management tech with blended human admissions management. The payback is easy and the service to students significantly improved – hardly a difficult decision!